This Market

“Why stay so long where your words are scattered

And doing no good?

I have sent a letter a day

For a hundred days.

Either you do not read them,

Or you have forgotten how to leave.

Let the letter read you. Come back.

No one understands who you are in that prison

For the stone-faced.

You have escaped,

But you sit there like a falcon on the window ledge.

You are both water and stream, but you think you need something to drink

like a lion or a deer.

How far is it back here?

How far is the light of the moon from the moon?

How far is the taste of the candy from the lip?

Every second you give away light.

We accept. We like this market.

Your love is a sweet poison

That we eat from your hand

To dissolve and drain away the ego-life

Now spraying this fountain from us.”

~Maulana Rumi as rendered by Coleman Barks.